Jack the Ripper: Can you solve the case?

Year 8 Humanities Source Booklet

Who Was

SOURCE A: JACK THE RIPPER was an unknown murderer who terrorized London in 1888. From August 31 to November 9 that year, five prostitutes were killed and horribly mutilated. The murderer was called Jack the Ripper because a knife was used to cut the victim’s throats and slash their bodies. The murderer was never caught in spite of the efforts of police, citizen patrols, bloodhounds, and even fortune-tellers. Scotland Yard, the headquarters of the London Metropolitan Police, identified three principal suspects. All were men known to be insane. However, the police failed to prove that any of them had committed the murders. Widespread charges of police incompetence caused the commissioner of Scotland Yard, Sir Charles Warren, to resign on November 8, the day before the fifth murder. The London Police received hundreds of letters from people who claimed to be the murderer. Only one of the letters seemed to be authentic. The sender’s address was “From Hell,” and part of a kidney of one of the victims was enclosed. By a modern historian

SOURCE B: From the Penny Illustrated Paper and Illustrated Times

SOURCE C: Jack the Ripper, name given to the unknown murderer of at least seven women, all prostitutes, in or near the Whitechapel district of the East End of London, from Aug. 7 to Nov. 10, 1888. One of the most famous unsolved mysteries of English crime; the case has retained its hold on the popular imagination. All but one of Jack’s victims was killed while soliciting customers on the street. In each instance the throat was cut, and usually the body was mutilated in a manner indicating that the murderer had considerable knowledge of human anatomy. On one occasion half of a human kidney, which may have been extracted from a murder victim, was mailed to the police. The authorities also received a series of taunting notes from a person calling himself Jack the Ripper and purporting to be the murderer. Strenuous and sometimes curious efforts were made to identify and to trap the killer; the eyes of one of the murdered women were photographed in the belief (later discredited) that the assailant’s image might be recorded on the retinas. From a modern Encyclopaedia

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SOURCE D: Locality of the 5 ‘canonical’ murders.

SOURCE E: One of the alleged Ripper letters Dear Boss, I keep on hearing the police have caught me but they wont fix me just yet. I have laughed when they look so clever and talk about being on the right track. That joke about Leather Apron gave me real fits. I am down on whores and I shant quit ripping them till I do get buckled. Grand work the last job was. I gave the lady no time to squeal. How can they catch me now. I love my work and want to start again. You will soon hear of me with my funny little games. I saved some of the proper red stuff in a ginger beer bottle over the last job to write with but it went thick like glue and I cant use it. Red ink is fit enough I hope ha. ha. The next job I do I shall clip the ladys ears off and send to the police officers just for jolly wouldn't you. Keep this letter back till I do a bit more work, then give it out straight. My knife's so nice and sharp I want to get to work right away if I get a chance. Good Luck. Yours truly Jack the Ripper Dont mind me giving the trade name PS Wasnt good enough to post this before I got all the red ink off my hands curse it No luck yet. They say I'm a doctor now. ha ha (Letter is reproduced with original grammatical and spelling mistakes)

SOURCE F:

Poverty Neglect Prejudice

SOURCE G: M.J.Druitt committed suicide in December 1888, the month when the murders ceased. His cousin, Lionel Druitt claimed he was the Ripper in a pamphlet he wrote.

SOURCE H: Prince Albert Victor - Some have identified the second in-line to the throne as the Ripper. It has been alleged that he committed the crimes during fits of insanity.

SOURCE I: Police investigations into the murders were hampered by conflicting witness statements, hundreds of hoax letters, a lack of evidence and primitive forensic techniques. However, no reward was offered, evidence was destroyed and the investigation suffered from police squabbling, resignations and poor morale.

SOURCE J: THE VICTIMS

SOURCE K: A FEW OF THE USUAL SUSPECTS (AND A RECENT ADDITION)

Prince Albert Victor - One of the most intriguing contenders for Jack the Ripper’s crimes is Prince Albert Victor, the son of King Edward VII and grandson of Queen Victoria. Known to his family as Eddy, the prince was second in line to the throne when he died of influenza at 28. In 1970, a British physician Thomas Stowell published an article implying that Eddy had committed the murders during fits of insanity caused by an advanced case of syphilis. This rather dubious claim took the international press by storm, and a few conspiracy theorists continue to explore whether the man who could have been king was one of history’s most notorious serial killers. Official records, newspaper reports and other sources, however, offer strong indication that the prince was nowhere near Whitechapel when the victims died. Montague John Druitt - On November 9, 1888, seven weeks after the fifth and final murder, this Oxford-educated lawyer was found floating in the River Thames, his pockets filled with stones. Investigators concluded that the cause of death was suicide and that the body had been at the bottom of the river for several weeks. Druitt had suffered a series of personal crises during the 1880s, including his dismissal from a teaching post at a boarding school, his father’s death and his mother’s institutionalization due to mental illness. While no concrete evidence connects him to the Ripper murders, the fact that the carnage ended right after his death was enough for the London detective Melville Leslie Macnaghten, who listed Druitt as one of the top three suspects in his 1894 report on the case. Walter Sickert - Born in Germany in 1860 and raised in England, Sickert became a highly regarded Impressionist painter who helped transform the British art scene. In the early 1900s, he created a stir with his suggestive depictions of naked prostitutes beside their clothed clients, including one painting in which the man has his hands around a woman’s neck. He became fascinated with the Jack the Ripper case, particularly while renting a room that his landlady believed the killer had once inhabited; the experience inspired him to paint the haunting “Jack the Ripper’s Bedroom” around 1907. Though not the first to suggest a link between the subversive artist and the Whitechapel butcher, the American crime novelist Patricia Cornwell became its leading proponent when she published her 2002 book “Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper—Case Closed.” In it, she describes how she and a team of experts used modern investigatory and forensic techniques to establish Sickert’s undeniable guilt, analyzing his paintings and comparing his DNA to samples found on several of the countless letters sent to the police and signed “Jack the Ripper” during and after the spate of murders. Many Jack the Ripper experts have soundly dismissed her claims, pointing out that most of these letters are known hoaxes and that Sickert was likely in France when the killings occurred.

Robert Mann - In 2009 the British historian Mei Trow announced that, with the help of modern forensics and psychological profiling, he had finally unraveled the mystery of Jack the Ripper’s identity. Trow fingered Robert Mann, an attendant at the Whitechapel mortuary where the victims were brought and examined. Based on the way he mutilated his prey, experts have long surmised that Jack the Ripper had some degree of anatomical knowledge. Many Modern-day criminologists believe the Ripper had a difficult upbringing and a low socioeconomic status, a departure from the classic image of the upper-class night stalker sporting a cape and top hat. The 50-something Mann, who spent some of his childhood in a poorhouse and worked with corpses on a daily basis, seems to fit this profile. And, according to the inquest into the murder of Polly Nichols, the Ripper’s first known victim, Mann took the unnecessary step of undressing her at the morgue; in Trow’s view, he did this in order to admire his own handiwork. Carl Feigenbaum - According to a recent hypothesis, Jack the Ripper was a German sailor named Carl Feigenbaum who was executed for murdering a New York woman in 1894. Former detective, Trevor Marriott, a former member of the Bedfordshire homicide squad, points to the fact that two merchant docks were in operation near Whitechapel and that the men who passed through them were known to frequent local brothels. (The Ripper is believed to have targeted prostitutes.) He also noticed striking similarities between Jack the Ripper’s crimes and the slaying of Feigenbaum’s alleged victim, Julianna Hoffman, which took place six years later. Archival research revealed that Feigenbaum, who went by a string of aliases, had been a merchant seaman for the Norddeutsche Line, which owned ships that had been docked near Whitechapel on every date of the five Ripper murders. Marriott also discovered that Feigenbaum’s defense lawyer had told newspapers that his client had admitted to being a serial killer and that he could place him in Whitechapel during Jack the Ripper’s killing spree. Jill the Ripper - Over the years, a number of people, including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, have considered the possibility that Jack the Ripper was not a bloodthirsty bloke but a femme fatale. The only female suspect considered by the detectives investigating the case was Mary Pearcey, an English woman who in 1890 was executed for murdering her lover’s wife and child with a carving knife. In 2006, a study by the Australian scientist Ian Findlay yielded surprising results that gave some credence to the Jill the Ripper theory. Findlay traveled to London to collect saliva from a selection of Jack the Ripper letters that experts believe to be the most credible. He then extracted DNA from the samples and used cutting-edge technology to create a partial profile. While the findings were far from conclusive, they did suggest that the sender might well have been a woman.

Sourced and modified from the HISTORY CHANNEL

TRY AND SOLVE the Jack the Ripper Mystery BY completing the following Investigative TASKS;

1. Identify which sources are primary and which are secondary by drawing and filling

in a chart like the one below;

Primary Sources Secondary Sources

2. Read and compare Sources A and C. Identify 2 pieces of information in which the

sources differ. How do you explain the differences?

3. What similarities did the Ripper murders have in common?

4. Read Source E. This letter is one of a few that experts consider could be genuine. Police create psychological profiles of serial killers by using written evidence to determine what their level of education is, what type of profession they might be involved in and what they may be like. Use Source E to create a profile of the Ripper.

5. Why would hundreds of people write to the police claiming to be the Ripper? Some

experts claim that journalists wrote the most convincing letters sent to the police. Why would journalists act in this way?

6. Look at Source F. According to the cartoon, what were the real reasons for crime in

the East End of London?

7. Why do you think prostitutes have been common targets for criminal assault?

8. Compare Source G and H. Two of the prime suspects, Druitt and Prince Albert Victor, were very similar in appearance. Does this mean one of them had to be the Ripper?

9. Look at Source I. The police were often criticised for failing to catch the Ripper. Do

you think people were right to criticise them? Use Source C to help you decide on policing methods at the time.

10. Read Source J. What things did the victims have in common? Can you suggest a

motive for the murderer based on this?

11. Read Source K. List the names of the main suspects.

Sherlock Holmes versus the Ripper. You are Sherlock Holmes. Examine the evidence on the main suspects in Source K and research them on the Internet. Which suspect would you choose as the likeliest candidate to be the Ripper? Explain your choice.